Stella Artois is launching a TV campaign for its new 4% "smooth" lager, featuring a lothario on the French Riviera in the 1960s who makes a slick getaway after charming a bikini-clad woman.

The TV campaign, which breaks tonight during the Champions League matches on ITV1 and Sky Sports, uses the tagline "Stella Artois 4%. Triple filtered with a smooth outcome".

In the ad the lothario tries to seduce a bikini clad woman by applying sunscreen as she sits by a pool.

Her older partner interrupts the pair and the young man falls off the edge of the cliffside swimming pool.

However, as he falls to the ground he bounces off clothes lines and ends up smartly dressed in a suit and tie outside a bar. Inside he casually orders a Stella Artois 4% as the woman's boyfriend arrives at the bar.

The ad closes with the boyfriend noticing his rival is wearing red high heels, leaving the viewer wondering if his smooth getaway has been blown.

Stella's new campaign is the first by the beer brand's new ad agency, Mother.

"The TV commercial pays homage to the continental heritage and quality credentials of the brand," said Andreas Hilger, the marketing director for Stella Artois parent company InBev UK & Ireland.

"However, we have built a new world for Stella Artois 4% in the smooth Riviera of the 1960s," Hilger added.

He said that by using the Riviera setting Stella was able to "capture the wry sense of humour and strong cinematic look that has always been at the heart of our brand".

The TV campaign is supported by a national outdoor advertising ad push using the same retro Riviera theme.

Stella's latest TV campaign has been eagerly awaited by the UK advertising industry because Mother is currently in a head-to-head battle with Publicis to take over the global advertising account for the whole Stella Artois brand. Mother won the account for the launch of the 4% variety earlier this year.

"Stella Artois 4% is a new product so we needed a new style of advertising but we didn't want to lose the cinematic feel that has made Stella Artois ads so successful in the past," said Laurence Horner, a strategist at Mother London.

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